- .... ---- - --- - ----=:;--==---=- -:::.----:._- - - -- - 31 C" . .' <J- Cc-:--'" "iii:::::> \ -. "'-....:0 ,:, \ ._ " "':', '\ -- '.' "Damn! 1 didn't bring any white." . . j;'f :Ä.,:" "' " been dealing with a case on the same floor of Greenbaum's building, had made a routine telephone call to Beek- man for his next assignment and had hurried right down the hall. "Just our typical service," Cullman told Green- baum when the lawyer pressed him for an explanation. This sort of thing makes Cullman the hospItal president feel that God is on his side. He was fortified in this belief when a window pane fell on the head of an employee of a textIle firm that had long resisted his appeals for a contribu- tion to Beekman Hospital. Cullman, who was innocently walking down the street behind the textile man when the accident occurred, summoned a Beek- man ambulance. A few days later he received a very decent check from the contrite firm. He does not rely wholly on acts of God, however. He likes im- portant people, and he is well aware that their influence can simplify fund rais- ing. He has decorated the Beekman roster of officers and directors with a glittering bunch that includes, or has in- cluded, Marshall Field, Elisha Walker, Harvey D. Gibson, Herbert Bayard Swope, Joseph M. Hartfield, Pierpont V. Davis, Perry E. Hall, and Wendell Willkie. The late Al Smith was a Beek- man director, and a devoted one. One day In 1930 he called Cullman up and said, "Howard, I have half a million dollars for you." Conrad Hubert, chair- man of the board of the Yale Electric Corporation and pioneer flashlight man- ufacturer, had died two years before, leaving approximately $4,600,000 out of a $9,000,000 estate for good works, to be selected by a committee of promi- nent men appointed by his executors. They thoughtfully pressed into service a three-faiths trio consisting of Calvin Coolidge, Julius Rosenwald, and Smith, and each of these men (rewarded for their pains by fees of $201,951 apiece) was given the privilege of allot- ting $1,533,333.33 as he saw fit. Smith awarded $500,000 of his share to Beek- man Hospital; Cullman earmarked this for the building fund. The hospital al- ready had an endowment of around twice this sum, but that did not discourage Cullman from writing LaGuardia in August of that year, "Both as a hospital presiden t and as a citizen, I was greatly disturbed to find that you are planning to levy a sewer assessment on Beekman Street Hospital in the amount of $295. I was more than astonished to learn that you personally favor this charge upon an institution having grave financial prob- lems." Cullman also pointed out that what the city gave the hospital for han- dling charity cases covered less than half the cost. 'The threatened assessment was never levied. C ULLMAN had been seeing a good deal of Smith even before the H u- bert windfall. He made it clear to Smith that the tobacco business and Beekman Hospital did not absorb all his time and ambition, and in 1927 Smith, then Governor, appointed him a commis- sioner of the Port of N ew York Au- thority, a joint agency set up in 1921 by the states of New York and New Jersey. The Port Authority was established for